The Economic Note published yesterday on the tolling plan for Quebec roads generated lots of reactions. I vonluntarily skip the news articles to refer you to some editorials published this morning. I must say that, while the reactions are generally positive in the French newspapers, they aren't in English newspapers.

"Then there's the question of practicality. Tolling onto and off an island is fairly easy. Setting up and maintaining electronic-tolling hardware at every on- and off-ramp in the province would be much more costly. Nor do we trust that Quebec could start province-wide tolling but keep the exercise revenue-neutral. Quebecers are already taxed brutally; let's have no new province-wide taxes until the total tax burden starts coming down. We hope Quebec will authorize some form of bridge tolls for Montreal, which truly needs new revenue. But toll roads across the province are an idea whose time should simply never come."

"A better way than tolls exists - a higher gasoline tax. The province wouldn't have to hire a single extra person. It could just increase the existing tax enough to pay for public transit, as Tremblay wants, or for road work, as the MEI desires, or for both. The big complaint against such an idea is that Quebecers already pay enough taxes. Yet gas prices here are half of what they are in Europe. Bottled water is, as is often said, cheaper than gas."